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How long would you wait? This was the question I posed to a few folks last week. I already knew the answer.

It wasn’t about the morning coffee a hipster barista creates as she slowly pours hot water in a thin stream over ground (and often fair trade) beans, and it wasn’t about traffic on one’s route home after work.

No. My question regarded how long would you wait to vote in an election. And unlike the examples above, which have a plethora of options, voting in its current form in our city and state is woefully in need of an overhaul.

Each election cycle for some time now, we have seen over and over again the images of people waiting in longer than normal lines. It is easy to simply write off the long lines as just another part of our democracy in action and what we can expect in a Presidential election year, but have you ever stopped to wonder why we just accept this for some voters while others just breeze right in and out?

Since I believe all things flow up in politics, we have to start here locally with the question of why the long lines of last week at many polling stations. This year, while people stood outside in thankfully warmer than usual weather for November in Michigan, we were treated to media images of people in lines extending outside of polling stations. Too many voting locations were woefully unable to...